Short Thought - Theory - most people don't understand this term, and that is a problem.

A lot of public discourse contains statements such as "That's just theoretical" or "It's only a theory".  These kinds of statement are meant to convey that the referenced position is in doubt often in contrast to the writer's own position that is presumably not in doubt.

I think it is worth pointing out that all statements about the real world in which we live are contingent rather than necessary in philosophical terms.  That means they reflect limited knowledge and are in fact "theories".

In philosophy something is described as necessary if it follows logically from some premise or premises regarded by definition as true.

No statement about the real world can be regarded as absolutely true as our knowledge about the real world is mediated by a combination of naturally occurring and human-made sensors and processing structures.  These sensing and processing structures are subject to error.  Therefore anything "known" based on data associated with them cannot be completely relied upon.

The approach humans have developed to deal with this situation and mitigate the risk of error in gathering and interpreting data about the real world is often called "science".  Doing "science" involves gathering data sometimes but by no means always under controlled, experimental conditions and then constructing descriptions usually but not always supported by the use of formal mathematics intended to explain the observations.  These formal descriptions are called "theories".  In addition to being able to explain existing observations, a theory must also predict new observations of the part of reality under investigation.  Further, the theory must be "falsifiable" by observation - this means it must be capable of making predictions that can be tested and potentially falsified by the results of the tests.

Theories (descriptions of reality) are only useful as far as they are able to explain observations and predict what new observations might be and up until some observation is made that contradicts the theory.  This means theories are always contingent on observation and can never be said to contain absolutely true statements about reality.

Falsification in the light of new evidence is how theories are developed or discarded and replaced by better ones.  This is science.  It is the basis on which ALL debates about reality should be conducted.  Its not the only basis, but it is a basis which should always exist.

Our understanding of reality, including the bits involving people and their behaviour is therefore only validly composed of contingent, falsifiable theories plus to a greater of lesser extent subjective things like aesthetics, preference, ethical content etc.  So statements like "It's only a theory" are not helpful, some might say they are not even meaningful.

Even if we are not doing formal science, using the basis of theory formation even informally without the use of mathematics should be the basis of how we think about and discuss the real world, especially when it comes to things affecting people.